Destiny Breaking
by Bakenko
Summary: On his way to claim Lord Voldemort's ring, Albus Dumbledore encounters a nasty surprise waiting for him in the Gaunt shack. Finding the Dark Lord himself, Albus is stunned when Voldemort makes a request of him that is both remarkable and unsettling… Disclaimer: suggested snake transformation and divination into future events of the HP series.
1. Part 1

The falling rain shimmered and with a light pop a figure flashed in and out of being, leaving the country lane with only the shadow of the hanging trees, the perfume of earth rising from the undergrowth, soaked out from beneath.

In Albus's opinion it was unwise to go conspicuous. Following his spell of invisibility he cast a charm to conceal his footprints and one to quiet the sounds of his steps. He was almost without presence. Only the prickling of his magic was felt as his aura brushed the hedgerows, little cheeps of surprise fluttering about as he moved up towards the top of the hill. He could not help the tension in his body. It wasn't as if every eve the headmaster set out to destroy part of another's soul.

Thunder rumbled somewhere high above. Any lighting that followed was lost in the white of cloud-reflected sun, the intense brightness of the sky patched with grey and summer blue, the colours mixing like the inky smudging of paint. The rain fell a little harder.

Severus had told him that Voldemort had been absent for some weeks. While there was nothing unusual in the Lords undertaking of secret, solitary activities, the nearly six week period of absence was not.

Without instruction the Death Eater's stirred against themselves. '_Failure'_ was not a word any of the faithful wanted to hear, (lest it was spoken to one of their masked neighbours). Severus had described them like circus lions in the ring, waiting for the master to show. With no sign of the curtains raising their attention turned to one another, claws beginning to uncurl. Bellatrix particularly was becoming intractable.

Whatever had so engrossed the Dark Lord as to neglect his circle was, Albus knew, not going to be a good thing. He could only construe a few reasons as to what Voldemort was doing. Most assumed Voldemort to be hunting for information to help him understand his failure to possess Harry, his duel in the graveyard with Harry, a weapon to defeat Harry; now that the prophecy between himself and the boy had been so utterly lost. One obsession forced to end and another begun. To Albus it meant the Lord was almost assuredly out of the country, giving himself a little more cover in his own hunting.

Almost at the end of the lane, Albus took no time to reflect on the village, the graveyard or _the_ _Riddle house_, but continued round the bend for the corpse, separate and distanced from Little Hangleton.

Triumph lit the corners of his mouth. He raised a hand and felt: muggle repelling charms and layers of complex dissuading magic, subtly done, almost untraceable, but still he felt there script floating on the air like spider's silk.

The old shack was as invisible as he. He_ had _to be right_._

Months – _years_ – of searching, sifting for a sixth of needle lost in hay that covered the stretch of the globe. If he was right then inside this beggar's nest was a piece of _him_. A small abhorrent slather of the man himself, and once arrested from its soiled hovel he would use the edge of Gryffindor's Sword and cut a little more of the lord away.

Whatever thieved and debauched curio laid waiting for him, Albus vowed it would soon join the tattered spoils of Tom Riddles Diary, now carefully kept in an innocuous draw within his own office. Poor Lucius, but Albus could not help the satisfaction he felt in knowing that Voldemort knew his Diary lay in the hands of his old, much hated professor; and at this Albus afforded a small smile.

xxx

Carefully Albus striped the magic cocooning the shack, like a master thief delicately assuaging the locks of an ancient vault, patiently, cautiously, should he trigger the swift vehemence of some hidden pitfall.

Gingerly, his old limbs supple, Albus slipped between the wards and saw the old shack trussed up with ivy leaf, its green deeper, verdant in the falling rain. Most of the windows had fallen in or if remained had been cracked with frost from many winters gone by.

The grey above rumbled and a sudden shift of light illuminated one side of the shack in brilliant brightness.

Albus moved forward, his eyes wandered over the ground near the door, curious to see if a curled form of snake bones remained, it had not, but Ogden's memory had been from a long time ago.

The door swung back too quickly on itself and a plume of dust and feathers blew into the air. Albus entered. Dark stone walls and little light meant Albus's had to falter, his hands finding the wall as he allowed for his eyes to adjust. The air pulsed. He could _feel_ Tom.

The prickling vitriol of the man's spirit suffused the house, the earth trembled with it and he followed the stench, growing ever stronger, to a small room at the back. Pausing before the door, he ran a hand over the worm-riddled wood and saw the cowed form of an ugly girl; her skewed eyes brimmed with tears as she cried silently against her bed. Long, long ago was this the room of Merope Gaunt. Albus frowned, he would not have expected Voldemort to bury a part of himself within his mother's room, or perhaps he had not known. Even with his soul intact, the creature hadn't felt in the same way other's do. Perhaps suffering from such an early age had numbed Tom; perhaps he was born broken.

Gently he pushed the door open and crossed the threshold. An iron bed supported the tattered carcass of mattress, its contents dragged all over the floor by mice and other animals; and there at the centre of soiled feathers, not boarded up, but with floorboards ripped open, squatted an open box within a brown hole.

The thief had arrived to find the vault opened and the contents gone. _Who? _

'Were you looking for this, _professor_?'

Albus whirled around and then he forced himself to freeze. In front of the grey walls alight in red, a pair of eyes stared, the rest of the monster diffusing into being as he shed his spell of invisibility.

Horror numbing him cold, Albus felt his own invisibility slip away and he held his wand consciously steady at the floor.

Time passed in the patter of falling rain, each droplet echoing on the tiled roof above, running down and slithering fat along the shard of window remaining in its frame. No amount of scheming or reflection could have predicted the situation Albus's now found himself in. With care he controlled each exhale and inhale of his breath, and waited for his host to speak. It would be rude for the guest to lead, and hostility at this party could turn the war irrevocably in the Dark Lord's favour. Caution. Horror and caution.

Finally Voldemort came forward, and Albus watched his hands reach inside his robes, take a parcel of velvet, lay it inside the box and open the green fabric to reveal the winking gold of Marvolo Gaunt's ring. Then the same tapered white fingers, quaking slightly, took the infamous yew wand and laid it on the ground. With the fingertips of his wand hand still touching the handle Voldemort levelled his eye's with Albus's own, and Albus saw the reptilian slits dilated to a near roundness, the white skin chalked whiter still, and the Dark Lord spoke in his cold susurrus, a slight tremble breaking the otherwise iced composure of his voice.

'And I quote: "We both know there are other ways of destroying a man – merely taking your live would not satisfy me, I admit…". You are a man of your word, are you not, Dumbledore? Do I have your word? Will you hear me out and keep your vengeance at bay?'

'Yes.'

'That is well.' And then Voldemort did something not even the disorientated fantasies of Albus's dreams would have configured; Voldemort rolled his wand to Albus's feet.

Then deliberately he turned from his surrendered stick, collapsing in a quivering fit against the furthest wall, and Albus saw the line of veins raised on the back of his neck like blue scars, leaching sweat as he fought for composure.

In what fantasy had Albus stepped into? And quite seriously, for a moment, he question his own sanity and then of the quaking wraith who he already knew to be insane.

'I knew you were to becoming soon because I have seen it, just as I have seen the touch of my ring will kill you…you have known about my horcruxes for some time; this year you will instruct the boy in my past, you will teach him and when you die you will send him to finish your hunt'. Voldemort turned his head, an involuntary twitch twisting the marble stillness of his face. No longer against the wall his body turned, slowly, and with effort he made to face Albus.

'Why do I know this?...because I have seen. Vaticination is not an art I have often practiced, destiny for me was contingent with volition; ruthless perseverance and cunning. Commit fully and fate will lay on you its guiding hand...'

Albus said nothing but continued to watch the man, unsure whether to watch his strange movements from the corner of his eye or to gaze at him directly. Provoking this creature was not something Albus wanted.

'I asked to see, after draining chemicals of lucidity – a tincture of my own making, and a ritual - ancient Assyrian glyphs latticed over by own aura, I lay beneath the sky. _"When the Sun and Moon are invisible, the king of the land will increase wisdom." _No sun. No moon. I pushed. And pushed and the star took me – and – _and!_ In its light it burned a knowledge into me that I can never escape from…'

The cold voice stuck and the throat swallowed back the hisses coming from the gaping mouth. Voldemort's head twisted from side to side and the white hand slid out to find the wall, while the other he raised, bringing it to the head, trying to quell the shivering that had taken possession over his entire body.

'They have all abandoned me – _all have betrayed me!_', the voice cracked, 'Why am I, who was to be so gifted, I, who despite the drag of suffering was to always break its stranglehold, to be punished so utterly?'

'If I am to be used in this life as the catalyst for some great future, to have been given a purpose and to have fulfilled that purpose, why punish me with the epitome of my fear – of my shame? When my fear is my shame and my shame my fear…as if death were not wrong enough…but why a _child's_ hell?'

'Why such contrast to my power and might? IF! If I am to suffer, can I not least suffer with the dignity of knowing my own name? Can I not remember the acts to which they call my crime? Why pull everything away from me? Why leave a being in so much want of touch, but so _foul_? Why an abandoned, ugly, child? - why would _destiny,_ who has aroused such a passion in me for life, encouraged me to reach for it all – demanded I do so – deny me that which it has insisted is my calling, my obligation, and then cast me into a state of eternal rejection?'

'Why use love against me!? Why drown me in its _need_?..._why_!?'

Pattering rain on the tiled roof above mingled with the ringing silence left when the man's words had ended, its gentle thrumming quietening the shrill note still left skipping on the air.

Albus studied the other man, his eyes cold and hard, trying to digest the fevered ramblings, the insane absurdity of the situation. The terrible emotion of the questions asked could have only been sincere, what truth was in them Albus didn't know, but only understood that this shaking wraith was as far removed from the tyrant he had duelled in the ministry as a kitten's mewl is from a lion's roar. Vulnerable in a way that Albus had never seen before, perhaps vulnerable enough for Albus to quietly take the rains. Disturbed and intrigued, with questions of his own stirring in his mind, Albus's eyes wandered over the rubied slits of the other before settling to stare fully into their glazed pools of red.

'Madness?'. Voldemort blinked. 'This was not a departure from sanity!'

'If you ever understood, ever actually were as sagacious as you pretend to be, you would understand the label you prescribe _"my madness"_ is but the greatness of a creature that is not like you!' Voldemort's spitting hiss lingered.

'Do you feel you have any sanity left to depart from?', Albus asked coldly. 'Sane men don't slaughter whole families and call it destinies calling'.

Voldemort's face cracked with a vile grin. '_Destiny_ or whatever name you use to call her with, is the only force and the only power. She is beyond Slytherin, beyond you…even beyond me…and no one, Dumbledore, no one will ever understand her workings - we are all gears turning a machine that can never contemplate itself, or understand, but turns because it does so for her amusement only'.

Voldemort tried not to look down at his own hand in case its tapered white had withered black and small. How could he explain to Dumbledore the horror that he knew awaited him in the future. He doubted that he could have convinced himself, knowing his own self would tell him to fight, rage at fortune no matter what, that force of will could turn the current of destiny upstream if he demanded it to – but belief in such thought would be lies. Voldemort knew, had felt with every quivering particle of his being, the truth of the future and his role within it: Lord Voldemort was to die, ignorance his finality.

'…and she has chosen Potter. Not because he is special, or skilled, but because his "victory" over me will inspire society to create something wonderful', Voldemort seethed and then he turned his head and laughed. 'You see, Lord Voldemort dose indeed create a revolution in magic, but he only seeds it with his death…his greatest, most noble desire is something he can never be a part of. Despite his genius and devotion to the art of magic, Lord Voldemort is only the front for the rest of the world to unite against.'

'And every future (and there are many!), every twist and turn for Voldemort ends the same way-!?' The high voice faltered, the thin legs giving way as Voldemort's back hit the wall. He lost control. His mind reeled as he desperately tried with the remains of his conscious to size himself, drag away the frothing stars dancing about his vision.

xxx

The final push his mother gave him tore at the ties holding the little remains of his sanity together, as he felt himself again and again falling into dust; sinking, his limbs broken, his mewling cries chocked back by ash.

Both names pulled from him as his shrinking brain made him dimly aware of the knowledge he had so preciously nutured, coveted and guarded, that which he had defined himself with and his genius, was trickling away like sand, leaving only a pitiless need; an infant's instinct for touch. Innocence had never looked so foul.

Destiny, cruel fate and the gears that turn, had made a mockery out of him. The child he had been and the monster he was fused into a creature that was both and neither. The thing was powerless while he powerful; helpless when he was supreme; in want of love, when he all his life had rejected it, scorned those who lived by it and fled from all idea of such a feeling… but his conviction in its triviality had never quite covered his fear of it…it was only when after the void had burned its terrible truth into his brain that his heart slacked, the truth of his fear he could not stop as it flowed like blood from a wound he simply could not close…that all his life amongst his many fears was one that had haunted them all…that rejection was his fear, and it was rejection he was condemned to eternally.

Tom was nothing and now he had learned Voldemort was but a means to a revolution, to be catalysed only in the event of his death and in society's rebellion to that of his life work and philosophies.

He had sounded mad, he knew he sounded mad, but he had no further option. His only hope was in the magic near most powerful to his own; Dumbledore was his only means to the end he chose for himself - _his choice_, and not of some numbers spun in the leering gaze of the cosmos.

He felt like the leviathan, like a near-god who in its crawl along the ocean floor had been met by a sudden eruption of molten earth; and this creature had been right to think itself peerless to all other of earth's creatures, but wrong, so wrong to think it could stand untrammelled in the face of all other forces, wrong to forget the power of the earth itself; but now drowning in the scourging rush of an element so foreign to its own had been forced to realise that greater powers do indeed exist.

Nothing, no matter how great, how righteous, or how much volition a spirit may possess, was safe. Nothing was concrete. All was a lie. Nothing sacred. That all, be it atom or soul, was simply a number destined to play out its role, to fulfil a sequence, and in doing so titillate the desires of some greater cosmic force.

Tom had realised that night, lost in the passage of the star, for the first time in his life that god exists. God exists in a myriad of smiling, snarling faces, kind and cruel, watching all with concern and indifference; a great towering bulk of everything conceivable and everything beyond; with no law of morality governing its action…just …narrative.

xxx

Voldemort's mind slid back into focus and he found his own wand pointed at him along with the tip of the other he now knew to be the Death Stick.

'I reject them both. I reject Tom and I reject Voldemort. It will be my choice. _Mine._' Voldemort's words slurred with almost unintelligible hisses.

'What will? What is it you want, Tom? What is it you're trying to ask for?

'DAMN YOU!' was Voldemort's shrill shriek, its piercing note wounding Albus's ears.

'_WHAT!_'

Slowly, pale limbs uncurled themselves from the crumbled body, and finally without meeting his old teachers iced eyes, Voldemort spoke, his voice a tremulous whisper. 'Make me in mind, in body, and in spirit…transfigure me…'

Albus drew closer and leaned his face further to the hunkered figure, making his voice as steady as he could, 'Yes?'

Keening breath escaped Voldemort's mouth as he struggle to master his own tongue, the two forked tips poking obscenely out of his dribbling mouth.

Albus waited, careful not to move, careful to keep breathing; noticing the ruby pools cloud over as tears welled at the silted corners of Voldemort's eyes; still not looking at him.

'I..make me a serpent..', and then almost inaudibly, Voldemort followed his request with, 'make me ignorant'.


	2. Part 2

Albus didn't know how many minutes had passed since Voldemort had made his request. A request Albus could have never predicted, not in his wildest speculations of the man who called himself Lord Voldemort.

Watching Tom's transformation over the years had amused Albus as much as it had disturbed him. He wondered how the mouldering of his handsome face had affected Tom, when the visage tying him to his hated muggle farther had been usurped with reptilian qualities. _Half breed. _How had it sat with Tom's philosophies? The tyrannical champion of Salazar Slytherin's pure blood doctrine, '_Magic is Might'_, hissed with the forked tongue of the Lord with a snakes face. Had it been, in his anguine eyes, some sort of perverse conformation of his superiority? His connection to Slytherin, to the dark arts itself? Or had he seen the animal that Albus saw in him? That bestial craving, apparent even in the small face of an eleven year old little boy.

_Homoem Meiosi _was just one of the spells surviving from the ancient world that could bring about the transformation Tom was referring to. A powerful, complex spell, rarefied in theses modern times, that worked with the power of the moon, taking the casted from the dark of new moon to the swollen eye of the full. Wounding and reshaping the victim with its swelling light.

The effect wasn't so much transformation, rather the complete breakdown and reformation of the debris of mind, body, spirit and - _soul_. Originally such spells were cast as sentences, wrought on "nobles" who had committed crimes otherwise worthy of death if they hadn't have shared connections with the elite. Homoem Meiosi insured life wasn't taken; but the voracious annihilation of anything human was as close to a death sentence as one could get. Rendering soul and body down to a primitive existence, the wizard gone – there was no coming back.

Voldemort was still hunkered against the wall, he hadn't moved. The man could have been dead he was so still, the silted iris slacked to great black discs as he stared into nothing. Horror, shame, and fear, that is what Albus saw in his silence, and anger too – there was always anger.

_Make me ignorant._ The words had left Albus cold. He had accused Tom of ignorance many times, had enjoyed the effect of the telling of this truth had had on the narcissist. Everything the man had done in the last hour was so discordant to his character. _What had this tyrant seen?_

Divination, was, by most of academic wizarding society, sneered at. Either dismissed as arbitrary, non-science or for the same reason feared for its maybe-truths; a powerful art that stubbornly resigned itself to delphic shadows, never quite offering to prove itself true or not true. Albus being a wizened man wouldn't commit either way but believed, Merlin knows, in the vast absurdity and wonder of the universe. The more you learned the more you came to realise that in fact you knew nothing, even if you pretended to know.

Perhaps Tom's, the great machiavellian strategist, faculties had diminished. The madness Albus had always sensed in him had actually toppled the ego from its pedestal. Perhaps thirteen years feeding off and copulating with the beasts of the forest will do that to a man. If this was so, then Albus gained, perhaps, victory in the war; with the added pleasure of twisting Voldemort into non being, to see that lithe body writhing in scales as the eyes bulged to the side, sightless; silver memory bleeding from them as everything fell away, brain shrinking, tongue lolling in the agony of half a lunar cycle – but at Tom's own request. Of course Tom would have the last say, Tom always had to have the last say. Maybe he would, when all Tom's horcruxes were broken, execute the snake in front of the Death Eaters. Show the circle a memory of their lord's betrayal before cleaving the white snake in two. It would certainly hamper the march of their Reich. Lord Voldemort, the champion of pureblood supremacy wants to be an animal, a snake. What proud legacy for Salazar Slytherin.

xxx

'You have showed me the ring – I have your diary. What of the other horcruxes?'

With a casual flick of his wand Albus banished the feathers from the floor and conjured two chairs, careful to set both at either side of the small room, were he thought Tom would like to remain and not arm linked in conversation on a reclining couch.

Slowly Voldemort blinked, life stirring within him. He was no longer shaking. The long white hand reached inside his robe and drew out a small crystal vial, which he then held out to the headmaster.

Albus summoned it to his outstretched hand and looked at Voldemort questioningly.

'Within are memories of each horcrux and its location…I have been meticulous, you will find all the information you require…'

'So that's it, is it? You're out of the game. No longer playing'. Albus tilted his head a fraction to one side and looked at Voldemort, who had decided to pull himself off the floor and now reluctantly settled on the bare wooden chair, flattening his back straight to the cold timber.

'Why didn't you assemble them yourself?', asked Albus searchingly.

Voldemort swallowed, wetting his lips before speaking, 'one is at Hogwarts, the diadem-'

'Ravenclaw's Diadem?'

'_Yes!_', Voldemort hissed, glowering at Dumbledore as he continued, 'one, the cup – yes! _Helga Hufflepuff's!._ – is in…the Lestrange's vault…one', and Voldemort gestured to the opened box by the hole, 'one is missing – Slytherin's locket.'

'Missing. Where?', came the headmaster's quite tone.

'I-I do not know. All I know is, despite the unmountable odds, _the boy _finds it – in whatever universe he's playing in…', Voldemort's mouth twisted as if tasting bile, then he continued, 'and the final, the diary, is already destroyed.'

'What happens to them when their destroyed?'

The bald head snapped forward, 'Why would you ask me that? – _don't provoke me_ – not when I can't have you!'

Eyes glittering, Albus leaned back in his chair and tried not to smile. The rain continued to fall but the sky outside had darkened, the sun a narrow slit along the skyline. Voldemort shivered a little.

'Would you like me to warm the room?'

'No!'

'Perhaps we should move to the centre room, there are no windows there; you won't be exposed to the air', suggested Dumbledore.

'No. I need to stay in this room. I hate this room. It reminds me – I need to be reminded, I mustn't turn away from this. From letting you do this to me.' Voldemort's voice was firm, emotionless even, as he stole a glance from his old professor.

Albus nodded. 'The diary, the ring, the _'missing' _locket, the diadem…'

'Yes, and the cup entombed within the Lestrange vault. Yes, Potter manages to worm his way through Gringotts securities too.' Said Voldemort, resentment curling the iced sibilance of his voice.

Albus sat forward in his chair and deliberately looked Voldemort straight in the eye, down the crook of his long nose. 'That's five horcruxes', he said flatly.

'Yes'.

'Five.'

'Yes', repeated Voldemort.

The chair opposite the Dark Lord scraped back as Albus sat up again, one of his old hands massaging the frown pulled across his forehead.

'Tom? Why lie to me? You must know what I know Nagini to be'

Voldemort said nothing.

'How can you expect anything from me when you closet information?'

'_Don't…'_

Dumbledore's eyes were harder than Voldemort had ever seen them; iced blue and mean, his voice just as hard as it continued to berate him. 'Where is she, Tom?' Where have you – oh!, _Oh_, now then.' Albus paused, gritting his teeth in disdain, 'There is only five, now, isn't there?'. And he watched as Voldemort almost undiscernibly shook his head.

'You killed her? Didn't you? What did it take, I wonder? What did it take of Lord Voldemort? Where is she now Tom? In the dark with all the other of his victims!' Albus hushed, '_Where is she now?_'

Shrieking Voldemort sprang from his seat, '_SILENCE! _– you know nothing of her!'. Then with painful effort he forced himself to sit, quaking with suppressed rage, as he spoke more to himself than to Dumbledore, 'She is waiting…beyond the wall of their prying eyes'.

'Remorse?... I think not.'

Voldemort insisted, gesticulating wildly to the swirling silver in the glass vial, 'It's in the vial! All the information you need is in the vial-'

'Then speak it!' roared Albus, 'Speak it you coward - _you reptile.'_

Pressure sizzled, spiralling out to push against all for corners of the closing room. The sun had dipped minutes before and now, suddenly, both wizards were aware of the deep indigo, swallowing the last wisps of light still drifting at the edge of the horizon. The sound of rain splattered past the broken window.

Teeth bared in fury, the lipless line of the mouth pulled just over his needle teeth, Voldemort's lived eyes stared. With every ounce of malice he could dredge from the nooks of his soiled heart, he spoke, in a deliberate and glacial hiss, 'Harry Potter is a horcrux', then he paused hoping to effect the headmaster, desperate to see the twinkle splinter in his old man's eyes. 'Thirteen years ago when his mudblood mother sacrificed her life defending the babe she unwittingly provided him with protection, an ancient magic, that reflected my own curse back at me. A part of my soul fractured and was thus sealed inside the child. Harry potter _IS infected_! And you Albus Dumbledore, didactic, sententious philanthropist, are going to have to kill him - _if_ - you accept my offer!'

Snake nostrils dilated in anticipation as Voldemort searched Dumbledore's face, desperate to see the crushing emotion that his revelation would cause, the righteous facade shattered - but it didn't come, the professor sat quite staid, his left hand curled in his right, casual holding his wand as well as Voldemort's own. 'I have suspected it, yes'.

'Well! Are you prepared to _kill?_', Voldemort spat indignantly. The rage foaming up inside him was terrible. He hated that wise old face; so still, nothing could disturb the haughty equanimity of those twinkling eyes. The old coot's ability to ubiquitously know, like omniscience was an innate sense, given only to Dumbledore, while the rest of the world wandered blindly in the dark, bleating for his guidance.

'If doing so will put an end to you, then yes. Yes I will kill the boy. It will shame me, I will hate myself for it, but my duty has always been to the people, the masses of poor, innocent and misguided people and to the individual, but only if saving him is not at the expense of all others', replied the solemn voice of Albus Dumbledore.

The professor continued, 'Your black and white vision of the world has always been a tremendous failing for you. It takes maturity to lift the veneers of absolutes and see the gritted texture of the real wood beneath. I fear you never had the chance to truly grow up, that part of your education was always severely lacking in both your child and adult life. What I do, I do for balance, Tom, to keep as many people happy and as well as they can be. You were never burdened with responsibility so you wouldn't know…'

'But you never sought to educate me, or at least try? I don't agree with you, I think your frightened of the darkness because it's an energy so unlike your own. Darkness doesn't need civilisation for its pulse to be felt, it is primordial by nature, the education of man has only ever refined it; it exists on such splendid spectrum, blends beautifully with all parts of our lives that it is a force unparalleled by love, or commerce, or the bond forged between mother and infant.'

'I never educated you because you would never have let me, and I believe in _choice_. People should be allowed to grow as they see fit, just because I have the means to stop them doesn't mean that I should, Tom. It would be against what it means to be human. As for darkness, why Tom, you speak as if you're in love…'

'You call me coward, you say you mustn't interfere - but you still came to defeat Grindelwald. Didn't it shame you to squat so long in your old school? Didn't it shame you that instead of killing your old lover - death: with which you regard as a mercy! - you entombed him within his own prison and then left him to rot?'

The professor's eyes crinkled. He hadn't expected Voldemort to have deduced the relationship he had shared so passionately, so long ago with Gellert. He hated Tom Riddle with every principle of his being, but right then like creeping venom, black vitriol came up from his tightened chest to settle, softly, just at the tip of his tightening tongue.

'What made you come to me Tom? Did you think your allusion for the love of, forgive me, a legless lizard was somehow going to nudge my heart and melt all contempt I have for the evil you have committed? For all the damage, all the pain you have inflicted on men women, children – families?'

'_I ASK YOU TO END ME!'_, Voldemort shrieked, and his scant breath seamed hardly able to make the sounds he needed them to, labouring, as he continued to implore Dumbledore, 'I request ignorance – you know of the shame that tears me - but I am offering you an end to the war!'

'Offer – how do I profit from this? If the Death Eaters defeat is assured, or so you tell me, where Harry lives and you don't, magic flourishes in the break of some otherworldly enlightenment…how can that compare to a future where I hunt out the rest of you, where some of your fragments lay in impossible places and one whose current origin is _unknown_… how does that compare to ending the hunt with murdering the boy himself when his life is assured with your death? You're asking me to feel enough pity to want to "save" you instead of the boy!'

Voldemort opened his mouth and then shut it, blinking in confusion.

'You're faculties are shot Tom. You've spend so long in the darkness it's made you blind!'

Voldemort thought for a moment, his ruby eyes grazing the floor as he tried to spin the words together he needed to say, even though such sounds were against dignity. 'But I could be mad. Couldn't I? What I have told you could be the result of madness – in which case you only gain. I can believe it without you having to believe in it. And if what I say is true, then, yes, Potter dies but you can live. There is no need to touch Marvolo's ring and succumb to the death the curse will otherwise bring you. You stay alive and look after your people; venerable, a sentinel. Death is but the next great adventure…Potter wins, he's with his family'.

Voldemort swayed on his seat and when the soft voice spoke, it did so in an earnest rasp, 'Nothing vouches for me …not even Slytherin… not here, not in the neither world…I have no family. The only people I have ever come to call family have not been human.' The bright carmine eyes widened in sudden clarity, transmitting something so unbelievably painful and Albus recoiled; disgusted at such heartfelt tenderness the man could feel for a nest of vipers, but not for Harry's family, and the so many other families who he had so mercilessly slaughtered.

Dumbledore smiled, 'Yes but Tom, the only reason you feel anything for these "people" is because you can control them. A snake hasn't the presence of mind to disobey or betray you. Whether such an animal can grow to love you or not, it doesn't matter, you can't return that love. You like the way they make you _feel_… Nagini didn't remain Nagini for long before you impregnated her with a part of yourself. Tom, you love yourself-', Albus faltered before concluding, ' – you love the idea of yourself and for that reason your only love is power'.

The Dark Lord shook his head, 'That isn't true…but it doesn't matter what you think…it never did. Will you do what I ask, or not?'

'Will you submit to me?'

'_What-'_

'Will you submit to me and open your mind? I go no further until you allow me to see for myself', Albus sighed and then followed his demand with, 'if what I think your saying is true, then it is your only chance of escaping whatever… _hell_ you see for yourself in the future.'

'You-', but Voldemort didn't finish, he let his sentence drown as the malice he would have voiced sunk, overwhelmed by another wave of despair. Defeat lay across his shoulders like a shroud of iron. _Diminished faculties –he dares! _But it was true, Lord Voldemort had lost the sharpness of the Lord he was before his fall, even Tom Riddle had a greater vigour and wile than he. He was tired. Always prepared to fight, always prepared to prove himself, to explore new magic and invent spells of his own, but _why! _Why keep suffering when _all_ life had been suffering, when death promised to be a vile pit; trampled into the ground of some lonely nursery and reviled by all who past him, or else forgotten, abandoned to the fields of cold, uncaring ash.

'Come on tom! You knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park'.

'…yes', and Voldemort swallowed a deep and painful sigh, barely pushing past the constriction of his throat. 'You can enter my mind, but understand Dumbledore – _I am letting you_, I do not submit to you and I owe you no deference!'

xxx

Taking preparatory measures into his own hands Albus vanished the feathers from the floor before reacting to the quickly darkening interior of the small room. With an elegant curl of his wand six baubles blossomed from the tip and floated up, languidly spacing themselves along the ceiling. Their bright yellow twinkled gaudily down on the shoulders of the two wizards.

Voldemort eyed them with a curl of his lip. The tawdry light blurred the edges of his vision, making it difficult for his nocturnal eyes to see. Dumbledore was going to try and render him as vulnerable as he could, this he knew, but he, Voldemort, was going to except all as equanimously as he could. Loathed to give Dumbledore any further inch of satisfaction. _He dares_ – but it didn't matter how supreme Voldemort was or felt, his only chance lay in the self-righteous hands of his old professor – and he knew it, and it tore him.

xxx

Why, this was hell enough in itself, thought Albus, watching the flat, serpentine face taught with the effort it took to keep his visage still; trying to reconcile his greater need for 'ignorance' alongside his instinctual thirst for dominance and power. Really, in Voldemort's own logic he was refusing to be used – refusing to be destiny's pawn. The worst thing Tom Riddle could do was to submit. Not submission engineered to give him his wants, why that was simply deceit, and, well, like Albus, Tom was very good at that. Tom lied as the rest of the populace breathed. No, not bending for something he wanted, but, to truly submit to another…that was the single worst crime Tom could commit unto himself…be it to Death or to Dumbledore.

The man (to Albus Dumbledore's knowledge) hadn't even submitted to the dark: to his life idol and muse. Not even then, when all magic was but a shared role of mastery and servitude, did Tom Riddle ever submit. Although the Dark Lord was clearly unable to admit it, it was clear to Albus that Tom was engaged in the motions of defeat. Albus was truly alarmed and shocked by his pleas for the psychological suicide he was soliciting, and felt real pangs of trepidation at the idea of entering such a mind as Tom's in the middle of such turmoil.

Trying to make his voice as gentle as he could without provoking Tom, Albus spoke, 'As best as you can I need you to relax. You know the procedure – please allow me to push with you. I know how capable a Legilimens, an Ocllumens you really are and am in no doubt of your aptitude, your, at times, unrivalled power – but for both are sakes I beg you, please, don't fight me'.

In the process of gently shifting the box containing Marvolo's ring from the centre hole to the far corner of the room, Voldemort continued as if he hadn't herd Dumbledore.

'Tom?'

'Yes. I understand', hissed Voldemort tersely. 'I promise to do my best, but…my mind – I have not been liberal to the control I am normally able to exercise…even in the most trying moments.'

'I understand. I will act with consideration'.

Voldemort raised one of his long hands, clenching it and unclenching as he tried to organise what he was about to say, 'Just don't let it pull you in…You will see my suffering and _I want you_ to understand what it means – why _I need_ you to do this to me…what you are going to see is not me – do not think it is me!...It is a cruel mockery of something I might once have been…of something, perhaps something all children raised without hope might have been…' Voldemort stopped, enough said.

_You are not a victim and you are not misunderstood – don't ever think that of yourself - Tom._

'I will be careful', Albus assured.

Ruby eyes fixed Dumbledore with an allusive and indiscernible stare, the silted irises wandering back and forth over Albus's cold blue ones, very much as he had done when he was just a boy, although not quite as directly as he had done when he was only eleven years old.

Finally, after what felt like minutes the red gaze flickered and Voldemort turned away from Albus to look out at the rain, now glinting oddly as the droplets raced past the light of sunny-glowing baubles, just outside the shattered window.

Albus said nothing, letting Voldemort take the lead. The two stood in silence and Albus glanced at the dark sky: the combination of the swollen-yellow lights against the deep indigo of the night heavens reminded Albus of a muggle painting, Van Gogh was it?

'How will you have me? Would you prefer if I sit or kneel?', came the sudden question, like a chill breeze blown suddenly the other way.

'I will have you the way you want…'

Voldemort sharply nodded once and deliberately came into the centre of the room. With all the grace of a lissom dancer he gently sunk to the floor and knelt in a pool of blackly glittering silk, tilting his head upwards so that his eyes were glassy in the light, irises contracting to thin needles centred in the mist of bloodied pools.

Clearing his throat, Albus rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to carefully place both wands deep inside his robes. Doing this he strode forward and prepared to place all ten pads of his knobbled fingers across the hairless cranium. He could see the silted nostrils dilating rapidly, but heard no breath and saw not a twitch break the porcelain mask of the wizard's anguine face.

He didn't so much think Tom had known when he, Albus, had been coming precisely; rather he must have been lying in wait in this hovel for some time because now close to the man he smelt the stale stench of dirt and sweat and halitosis: lingering around his parted mouth.

'Relax…just relax…', murmured Albus, and as soon as he felt some of the tension ease beneath his fingers he yanked Voldemort's outer mind causing the minute irises to swell; swelling and swelling till he was staring into the depths of two perfectly circular discs, like peering into the still waters of a deep, dark well.

A breathy groan broke the composure of the kneeling man and Voldemort let his conscious fall to the sides of his mind as Dumbledore slid in.

xxx

Silver records played past Albus as he watched the people, the sounds, sights and smells uncurl around and above him, to all sides, like the unfolding of a film reel before countless lights. Yet some of the silver mouldered iron and then brown, breaking in patches of slimed tar as Voldemort's recollections shivered under the attrition of some nameless force, its appetite riddling his mindscape with holes. The bright of youth marred in a veil of dull, dank, brown.

Albus forced himself to remember to breath and pushed forward, sometimes flinging the people away from him or else blocking out the cries of naked wide-eyed children.

He saw himself taking classes and felt from the perspective of a thirteen year old boy the singular terror, awe and hatred he had felt toward himself. Saw himself at his desk refusing the teaching post to Voldemort when he had come asking… almost handsome, with the waxen cast of his skin and the thinning scalp.

Then he saw, was, committing atrocity after atrocity: unthinkable experiment's on the living and the dead. Murder. Instructed rape. The prolonged torture of so many nameless people. A delicious smile curling his insides as he watched: the people writhing, faces upturned in agony -and he peered tall from above them, like a vulture into the flickering pulse of their half-lit eyes.

_Stop! _And he pushed through, racing deeper and deeper – his legs dissolving as he began to traverse the ground by pushing forward on his belly. Spooling on the sun soaked rocks of an Albanian forest floor. His brown coils locked in the undulations of another as he allowed the other snake to push into her – _Stop! This is not what I want to see!_

Like a man who has been held underwater for too long Albus erupted through past memories, flinging himself to where he wanted to go – and he was preparing for a ritual deep in the desert sands, after perusing tome after tome, some cryptic prelude he had remembered from the travels of his youth – and he was pushing – and he did feel the star. Such cold light was unbearable. Its brightness swallowed him whole – and then the roaring about his ears stopped. An unbelievable silence suspended him in space, and in the sheer pressure of nothing he forgot who he was, why he was there and what he was doing…

…then trillions of futures broke out at once; rushing through his mind and soul in a greedy frenzy. Voldemort dies. Voldemort dies. Tom Riddle isn't recognised. Voldemort dies.

Revolution! Such wonderful invention, it was a magic Albus had never seen before, so beautiful, so alien – it made Albus want to cry. Was that muggle magic as well? What was this magic enveloped with numbers and code: a great rush of ones and zeroes…bending the laws of nature, meeting magic head on, colliding in wondrous union… and Harry, the first insubstantially small domino destined to fell them all.

Something was terribly wrong. He felt like he had eight faces and raised a hand to touch the back of his head. Eight mouths all pushing into each other, flattened, struggling for breathe; his hands desperately clawing from inside his own body, nails trying to push the skin of his stomach out as he fought for air…

…and then he was breaking, his long legs splintered like sticks as the rest of his bones sucked back into himself. A crowd had gathered about him and a woman came forward picking up the folds of his skin and meat and flinging them downwards…her desperate shrikes of _'It's not mine! It's not mine!'_, beseeching the mercy of the other souls who had gathered to see him fall… echoing as he fell.

Alone, lost in time, the scorching freeze of ash clung to his foetal body. He knew nothing. Remembered nothing, but fought for something. His infantile body wormed on the spot unable to move, unable to think, and he lifted his raw mouth and wailed, wailing and wailing. He knew not why he cried but desperately he mewled for something, a hand, a touch, anybody…

Tom Riddle isn't recognised. Voldemort dies.

xxx

'_Haaa_…!', Albus sucked in air like a man escaping freezing water, falling backwards, keeping a tethered hook into Voldemort's mind as he fell, his old back hitting the floor with a painful thud.

Stars hazed his vision and he lay there begging the rushing sound in his ears to cease.

Then he heard the wails and knew it had followed him and he looked across, aghast at Voldemort's form, writhing on the ground, shrieking like a burning child as his limbs flapped against his sides.

'_SHUT UP!_', Albus screamed and he launched himself at the flailing man, striking as much of him as he could reach. He grabbed the flat face and forced the monster to look at him, starring in horror at the wide, black, eyes, traced thinly in red. He slapped the face and drew his hand away and again and again until the creature's squalling stopped, until it stopped looking at him like a child thrown out in the cold.

Soon the cries ceased and Albus became aware of the red staining his hands. Stopping, he studied his quaking fingers and then looked down to see the snake face puffed and swollen, blood running from the nostrils as piss ran from between the legs.

_Oh God!_

_Merlin. What?_

He didn't move. Reclined himself against the wall and waited for his racing heart to stop pounding. _He hadn't meant that! He really hadn't meant to keep hold._


End file.
